I've been trying without success to give a splash image to grub. I've got a picture called spud.xpm.gz that I've converted and want to use. my menu.lst file is:

timeout 10
color black/cyan yellow/cyan
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/images/spud.xpm.gz

i18n (hd0,0)/grub/messages
altconfigfile (hd0,0)/grub/menu.once
default 0

title linux
kernel (hd0,0)/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda7 devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda5 vga=791
initrd (hd0,0)/initrd.img

title failsafe
kernel (hd0,0)/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda7 failsafe devfs=nomount hdc=ide-scsi acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda5 vga=791
initrd (hd0,0)/initrd.img

title floppy
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

I've tried the splashimage line without the '=':
splashimage (hd0,0)/grub/images/spud.xpm.gz
I've tried getting rid of the alconfigfile, i18n, and color lines because they never show up on any of the standard examples. I really do have a spud.xpm.gz in that directory, and it really is the hda1 partition. I'm using grub that came with Mandrake 9.2 (grub 0.93).

Anybody any ideas?

Are you sure it's not in the /boot directory? Here's an example which I have...

boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=15
splashimage=(hd1,1)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

I bow to homey's great knowledge but seem to recall that the image file must also be a low resolution file, I think 8 bits for grub to handle

somebody remember ?

Not all grub has splash image support especially official one. You may want to try hacked version of grub.